Til We Meet Again
by Lucillia
Summary: Between Madara's death and his revival in Naruto's BFF, Naruto moved on and lived eight years of his life, during which, he grew up and became a ninja. Not necessarily in that order. Oneshots and Drabbles, not in Chronological Order.
1. The Competition

There was a reason that the Academy Instructors weren't Jounin, and it was the fact that they were oblivious to certain things that a Jounin who expected to survive in the field for more than a week would notice. The Hokage had an excuse for not spotting what the Academy Instructors had missed, as he didn't spend several hours of almost every day with a number of the children of Konoha, as he had a great many other tasks to deal with such as the reintegration of the Uchiha Clan with the rest of the village.

While everybody was so focused on the usual competition for the top spot in the class, they didn't notice the fierce competition for another spot that was going on right beneath their noses. After Naruto had been transferred to the new Instructor Umino Iruka's class due to the fact that while the other instructors now pitied him, they were also scared shitless of him, a competition between the two best students in the class started. Rather than vying for the top spot, the pair of nine year-olds were trying to take the spot at the bottom.

Sasuke - who was doing this out of a sense of self-preservation as Naruto had seen him practicing with Itachi, and thought he was cool - had toned down his displays of skill quite a bit, and started trying to look like a complete moron to everyone, especially to the orphan his mother had all but adopted. The last time Naruto had thought someone in his family was super-awesome, they'd died, and he didn't want to share his father's fate. He'd known that it was an accident that had been a result of his father trying to hide a weakness that had caused his father's death, but his father wouldn't have been in the hospital in the first place if Naruto hadn't thought he was totally awesome.

Naruto, who had improved in leaps and bounds now that there were people who were helping him along rather than ignoring him, was trying to take the position of Dead Last so that people could underestimate him until it was too late, and he pulled out a totally awesome technique with which to defeat an enemy-nin. Where he'd gotten the idea to do so had been the Root ANBU who had been training him in the mystical arts of reading and writing. The man had told him that it was best to be underestimated until the last minute when he had asked for a lesson on how to become a good ninja. Why he was trying to be Dead Last however, was because he had seen Sasuke try to take the position, and thought the other boy was trying to become a better ninja than him.

After the competition had started, every lesson became a trial in patience for the boys' instructors as shuriken and kunai flew everywhere but the target, and the boys' handwriting devolved into something that even a drunken Mizuki who was having the time of his life working for Root couldn't translate.


	2. Hugs

He doesn't hug anyone anymore. It's been years and years since it happened, but he's still afraid that he'll forget himself, pull too tightly, and lose someone else. He'll let people touch him, fondly ruffle his hair, and hug him, but he doesn't hug them back.

It took a long time for him to accept casual touches and other signs of affection after he had gotten over the shock of what he'd done to Fugaku-san and the deaths of two of his friends. He could feel the third friend he'd made in that month when everything changed out there, but every time he came close to spotting him, the man would vanish as if he were smoke.

He'd flinched when Mikoto-sama had pulled him close after the funerals, after he'd run out of tears for the second time in his life. He'd flinched because he'd been afraid that he'd put his arms around her without thinking, and she'd be gone too. He couldn't lose anyone else, not so soon after losing them, the three people who acknowledged him as a person and thought him worthy of their friendship.

He liked Iruka. After the villagers' eyes changed from hate to pity and fear when his friends died, Iruka's eyes had been only a little wary. Eventually, that look vanished altogether, replaced by something that was neither fear, hate, or pity. If he could label it, he would attach the word love to the look. Not the icky kind of love that boys and girls shared, but the kind of love that was in Itachi-Niisama's eyes when he looked at Sasuke.

He liked Iruka. Iruka wasn't afraid to hug him.


End file.
